The Skinny on What’s Trending in Drinks at Restaurants and Bars
By Carina Ost 
Good news, we are in 2011, prediction time is over and it is time to see what’s really trending. Low calorie options on menus or calorie content exposed is nothing new, but what is new is where that trend is spilling. Hint: look to what’s on top of your coaster or cocktail napkin.
While the nation is experiencing a cocktail explosion many Americans’ waistlines are expanding. For many diners the question becomes: cocktail or dessert? With the rise and reintroduction of so many interesting prohibition and artisanal cocktails who wants to just try one, there must be a better solution.
Your Restaurant Doesn’t Serve Spam, Why Should Your Facebook Page?
By Carina Ost
Your restaurant’s Facebook page is an extension of your brand and a great way to interact with your guests outside of the dining room. This social media dos and don’ts article will help keep your restaurant’s Facebook page a spam-free zone. Your fans deserve better than that!
Here are the five things that you must avoid on your restaurant’s Facebook page.
Do You Make These 5 Facebook Mistakes?
1. Feeding your Twitter posts onto your Wall. Twitter is a great tool to promote your restaurant, but Twitter and Facebook require radically different approaches. Ideally you want your patrons and fans to follow you on both. It’s okay to do some duplicate posting, but it can start to look really tacky, and you will lose your fans’ attention by patronizing them with second hand posts. Make your fans “like” you by providing them with original content.
2. Bombarding peoples’ newsfeeds. 1-3 times a day for wall postings is a good number. Any more than that will increase the number of people who hide your feeds from their friends. Post your specials, new cocktails, fresh ingredients just added to the menu, and lots of photos! Fans devour photos.
3. Talking only about your restaurant. Yes, people “like” and follow your Page to get updates about your food and events, but to really position yourself as an influencer and thought leader, you should be sharing interesting things that are happening in your neighborhood, among your colleagues, and local suppliers (breweries, vineyards, farms).
Talking about food scraps and waste may not be the most scrumptious thing to post about, but Camino restaurant in Oakland posted an article on the subject on their Facebook page. They simply wrote, “This is what happens to our leftovers!” and linked to a feature story about an Oakland machine that turns food scraps into energy. It is informative, engages the community with the restaurant, and is an excellent example of going outside yourself on your wall.
4. Ignoring the people that “like” your Page. Nothing will make people feel like they are being fed spam more than ignoring their comments. Always respond to people that legitimately post questions or comments on your wall. If you allow people to comment and they never actually hear from you, then what is the point of having a Facebook Page? One-way conversations are for your restaurant advertising, not social networks.
5. Impersonal offers, discounts, specials, coupons, and contests. Don’t get me wrong, we all like specials but when it isn’t targeted, people automatically think spam. Think your ideas through a bit. Perhaps a photo or comment contest or a trivia question. Also one special I always like is: “For every 100 “likes” we get, we will randomly give a $100 gift card to our fans.” Make them glad that they “liked” you! Show them that you care and value their patronage and loyalty. Think of your FB fans as brand ambassadors who have the power to spread great word of mouth.
By avoiding these pitfalls, people will be happy to “like” you and will be excited to try all of the wonders that you feed them!
Hopefully, you’ve read our article on How To Set Up a Restaurant’s Facebook Page. And let us know if you need any assistance, we’re here to help.
Share your best restaurant marketing on Facebook best practices in the comments below!
Photo Credit to Ishibakasama on Flickr
How Safe is Your Restaurant’s Reputation on Yelp?
By Carina Ost
What is Yelp? If you look up the definition of the word, it means “a sharp short cry.” If you were to ask your fellow restaurant owners they may think, Yelp is as Yelp does.
The website Yelp is a user generated site for reviews on anything and everything. If you are a restaurant owner Yelp reviews may be your top fear. You may let out a sharp short cry yourself with the idea of one Yelper writing a bad review and ruining your restaurant’s reputation forever.
That is a legitimate fear but Yelp does not control your restaurant, you do! You can monitor, respond, post offers, events, and photos for free but you can’t edit what people say.
Also, and this is a big no-no, you can’t post positive reviews from fake Yelp accounts nor can you ask your employees or your public relations agency to do so. Not only are fake posts unethical and against FTC Guidelines on Adequate Disclosure but it is also desperate, pathetic, and the readers will know right away.
According to Yelp, 83% of users rate a business 3 stars or higher. That is not bad odds. As a Yelper, experienced food blogger, and professional restaurant reviewer, those statistics mimic my review history.
It pays off for Yelpers to write a lot of reviews, it helps their chances of achieving Yelp Elite status which includes private invitations to parties with free food and booze. Also, it can be gratifying for some Yelpers to write a negative review to an untouchable and perfect restaurant; call it human nature.
You must understand that negative reviews come with the territory and if it is genuine feedback take it and learn from it. If it is something completely absurd like, “I hate this restaurant because the waitress looks exactly like my ex girlfriend….zero stars” Just laugh. There is nothing you can do. A smart Yelper will read a positive review, a negative review, and the most recent and read them all with a grain of Kosher salt.
A San Francisco restaurant, Pizzeria Delfina, has been very smart about utilizing its negative reviews and turning them into positives. As quoted from the New York Times article Restaurants to Yelp Reviewers: Bring It On:
Pizzeria Delfina, a Mission District institution, is flaunting Yelp reviewers’ mean-spirited, one-star reviews with pride. The restaurant made T-shirts quoting bad reviews and gave them to employees to wear on the job.
Obviously, this may not be the right public relations strategy for every restaurant but the point is that a negative Yelp review is one person’s opinion and it is not the end all be all.
Yelp is only part of your marketing communications mix that helps to build your restaurant’s reputation. If you tweet and treat your customers well, engage with them on Facebook, have a great website, restaurant, and food, then a few bad Yelp reviews really won’t matter.
8 Great Ways To Treat & Tweet Your Food & Wine Followers
By Carina Ost
As a longtime twEATer, I live to both eat and tweet. Most of the people who I communicate with on Twitter are other foodies, restaurants, food and wine bloggers, wine enthusiasts, and wineries. After years of successful Twitter engagement, I know what types of activities will help your restaurant or winery build an engaged Twitter following.
Now that your restaurant or winery has a Twitter account, what’s next?
Hot tip for building great Twitter relationships: You must communicate consistently to make a big impact with those you follow and those who follow you all in 140 characters or less!
Here are the 8 Best Tweeting Tips to build a rabid fan base of food and wine followers:
8. Retweeting (RT) is the easiest way to communicate on Twitter because you do not have to think up content. You can either copy and paste or simply click the Retweet button. Look for things that are newsworthy or useful to your followers. If you have a winery perhaps retweet a news story about how the weather is affecting the vines this season. Use this technique often, but not too often. It should supplement your original tweets, not be the only information you push out.
7. Participate in Follow Fridays (#FF), this is another easy tactic that requires very little effort. Simply make a tweet of your favorite tweeters and tell your other followers to follow them. A little description with only a select few is more valuable then just a list of people. For example:
#FF our favorites of the week that made us laugh: @Foodie1 @Foodie2
6. Involve other local business in your tweets, especially if they are complementary. If you are a winery, mention (@) the bed and breakfast down the street in your tweet and recommend them. The B&B will then, most likely, mention you and you will become a twitter team and an unofficial strategic alliance.
5. Post pictures on Twitter of what you are working on: a new dish in the kitchen or a glass of wine you just opened up. Write a short description to accompany it so people know what they are opening. TwitPic and Plixi are the 2 big photo uploaders for Twitter.
4. Post specials and promotions. This is something simple that you can and should do everyday. If someone wanted to know your specials in the past perhaps they would walk in and look at your chalkboard or wait for the waiter to remember to tell them. Not anymore: post it on Twitter.
3. Let your followers be part of the restaurant and winery process. Most people are not entrepreneurs or restaurateurs but they would like to be; they are curious about the life. Post things about the kitchen meals, working on getting your liquor license, or any of the other behind-the-scene processes. Also ask your followers for help, but only if you are willing to accept it, don’t use it as a marketing ploy. For example:
What would you love to see on the menu this season?
2. Have real conversations with people on Twitter. Read the Timeline and participate. If someone asks a question in the Twitterverse, you should be the person to an answer it. When someone asks a question about wine pairings, consider it your golden opportunity to shine. Answer the question. Mention them (@) and don’t be the first to end the conversation. If they say “thank you” then you should respond:
You’re welcome @winequestions, let me know if you ever have any more wine pairing questions.
1. Provide real contests for your followers with prizes. Bridge the connection from a virtual relationship to an in person relationship. Tweet something like this:
The first 10 people to come in the winery and say the word “Riesling” get a specially crafted Riesling flight on us.
If you tweet it, the food and wine tweeters will follow!
Side note: You should be sending a minimum of 10 tweets a day, trust me, once you start you will become addicted and want to do more. The more you do, the better! Remember, you are still a business so only use abbreviations when you are in a character crunch and try to make these wink and happy face free tweets.
Photo Credit: Webtreats on Flickr
Good Bedfellows: Why SEO and Public Relations Should Marry
In many organizations the search engine optimization and the public relations teams don’t work together. And this is a huge missed opportunity since 75 percent of search results are due to the activity that happens off your website. Public relations tactics such as press releases, blogger engagement, guest blogging, forum commenting and other external communications efforts can, if strategically executed, dramatically impact your organic search rank.
The first introduction consumers and media have to your company are your Google search results. Generally, searchers are not typing in the name of your company, they are searching for terms such as “steakhouse”, “restaurant”, “Great Napa wine tasting room” and other category keywords. If your competitor comes up ahead of you, most likely the click will go to them and not your company.
According to recent research from the Chitika, an advertising data analytics firm, the first page, first position result is worth double the traffic of the number two spot.
But don’t despair, even small search rank improvements can make a big difference: moving from the 
first position on the second page to the last position on the first page will see a 143 percent jump in traffic. For a highly competitive industry like fine dining restaurants, this could make the difference between staying in business and having to close your doors.
In addition to helping with your search rank results, search optimization can drive referrals, word of mouth recommendations and establish your company’s expert status in a category, as well as, provide many other benefits.
PHOTO CREDITS: Google photo – ManFrys; Despair Finger - Juliana Coutinho
Ink Foundry Embraces Diversity: Scotsman Kai Henderson Joins Word Of Mouth Marketing Team
We originally met Kai as an applicant during our social media marketing intern search last February.
Even though we were very impressed with his credentials and video resume, he was living in Scotland at the time and we weren’t sure how that would work out given our genetic inability to figure out the time difference.
After being introduced to him last year, he has since graduated from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland with a Marketing and Economic BA with Honors – First Class (we have no idea what this means, but it looks impressive so we left it in) and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to continue his marketing career.
Kai will work on Ink Foundry’s word of mouth marketing programs for our restaurant and wine clients. Previously he was the marketing director for the European Business Game, a competition in Croatia where he coordinated a sponsorship agreement through his employment with Slater Menswear who provided kilts and other traditional Highland dress items for the team during the finals.
We are looking for a photo of Kai in a kilt and Ink Foundry is offering a Tiger Beer bottle opener as a reward to the first 50 people who find and post a photo of him as an adult in a kilt in the comments section of this post.
You ask how is his addition to the Ink Foundry team embracing diversity?
- Rumor has it that he has been known to wear a kilt (that’s diverse, right?)and;
- He’s male. There have been scant few men brave enough to roam the halls of what is effectively the Ink Foundry sorority.
In addition to working with Ink Foundry he is also receiving a well rounded cultural experience working as the Marketing Director at Sausalito, Calif. based Antenna Theater where he heads up the communication efforts for the Magic Bus.
Please join us in welcoming Kai to the Ink Foundry team.
Save the Date – Napa Valley Vintners Tasting
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar has teamed up with the Napa Valley Vintners Association for a tasting event featuring nine soon to be announced vintages and carefully paired hors d’ oeuvres. We hope that you will Save the Date for the evening of Friday, October 16th and join us for this showcase of Napa’s finest. This event will be hosted at two Fleming’s Bay Area locations in Palo Alto and Walnut Creek, each highlighting an assembly of five to six participating vintners.
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar has recently debuted this year’s Fleming’s 100, a collection of 100 wines by the glass which acknowledges the pleasure of discovering a great wine at a great value and features 30 wines available for $10 a glass or less.
The Napa Valley Vintners is the non-profit trade association responsible for promoting and protecting the Napa Valley appellation as the premier winegrowing region.
More details coming soon!
PHOTO CREDIT: It’s Holly
11 Top Tips To Build Your Twitter Following
1. When You Create Your Twitter Handle Consider The Following:
- If you are a household brand name, like Virgin America, by all means use it. Followers will be looking for you.
- If you are a well known in your category and people are already seeking you out, use your name in your handle. Again, people will want to find and follow you because you’ve already built a personal reputation offline.
- If you fall into the category of virtually unknown, like most of us, consider using a descriptive name in your title, for example @winedinetv. Building my following would have been much easier had I used “public relations” or “social media” in my twitter handle.
- If you use your company name and/or your personal name and you don’t have a significant offline following, describe what you do in your profile.
2. Fill Out Your Profile Completely
- Think of this as your introduction to your followers. If you were at a networking event you would introduce yourself and at some point get around to telling people what you do for a living, your philosophy on life, the books you’ve written; whatever you want people to know about you.
3. Post A Photo Of Yourself
- This proves you are indeed, human. Leaving the Twitter icon up looks like you might be a spammer (this is the equivalent of talking to a wall at a party and no one wants to relive THAT experience). We found when we had our logo posted we did not get as many followers. When we posted my personal picture, the numbers of followers increased greatly. Again, going back to @winedinetv, they use their brand name, but put pictures of themselves up on their page.
4. Do Not Lock Your Updates
- Locking your updates tells potential followers that you’re not interested in having a two-way conversation with them. We have a client who was complaining that no one was following them, but they had locked their updates. We unlocked their updates (and changed a few other things) and followers poured in.
5. Follow Your Followers
- The whole idea behind participating in social media is to have a two way conversation with the folks in your group. If you don’t follow people who follow you, it’s like you are staring mutely back at someone who ask you a question.
- There are a few exceptions and I may be a prude, but there are some people who I don’t follow back because of the content that they are tweeting. Some of that stuff I just don’t want to see pop up on my screen!
- If you don’t follow your followers, you may find that they stop following you.
6. Follow Your Follower’s Followers
- If your followers like your content, their followers are likely to be interested in the same topics.
7. Be Consistent With Your Tweet Content
- This allows people to find and follow you based on content. With few exceptions, I consistently tweet about social media marketing, public relations, wine and restaurants. If someone is considering whether to follow me, they will have a good idea of what I’m all about and decide if that’s information they are interested in receiving.
- If your business is geographically specific, i.e. you run a furniture store in West Hollywood and you know your customers come from a 15 mile radius, you need to mention “West Hollywood” in your tweets as many times as appropriate.
8. Give Back To The Community
- It’s fine to send people to your website for specials, deals, information etc. But if you only do that, you will earn a bad reputation as a taker, you will lose followers and break the trust of your followers.
- Find articles that talk about your area of interest or retweet other posts.
9. Avoid Following People With Locked Updates
- Do you really want to try to have a conversation with someone who is already telling you they don’t want to talk to you?
- I have found that these people are less likely to follow back
10. Tweet (seriously)
- I realize this seems obvious, but clients will tell me that they can’t understand why no one is following them, but they posted three totally lame (and you know who you are) updates months ago.
- You need to post on a regular basis with relevant, helpful information. Except for your parents, few people care that you can’t find matching socks in the morning.
- We recommend that client’s tweet at least every 48 hours.
11. Don’t Over Do It
- If you are tweeting too frequently, unless you are reporting breaking news, you are probably sending out too much information too frequently that can overwhelm people and turn them away.
Check out our 26 Tips On Social Media Participation.
PHOTO CREDIT: AcousticSkyy
Fleming’s Valentine Sharing Menu
In honor of Valentine’s Weekend – Friday, February 13th through Sunday, February 15th — Fleming’s will offer a special Valentine Sharing Menu created especially for two, in addition to the regular a la carte menu. To give couples another reason to celebrate, Fleming’s is offering all couples dining during Valentine’s Weekend a complimentary $25 Valentine’s Card to use for a future rendezvous with their sweetheart.
The Valentine’s Weekend Sharing Menu Offers:
Saucy Glazed Porterhouse Steak, Double-thick cut with a cognac mushroom glaze, served with haricot vert amandine and parmesan cheese mashed potatoes
Served with choice of Fleming’s, Caesar, or Wedge Salad
$98.00 for two**
Suggested wine pairing: Chateau Montelena, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley, 2005
Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb and Lobster En Fuego, Coarse mustard and fresh herb crusted lamb rack, paired with generous chunks of Maine lobster prepared with shallots, sriracha chile-soy sauce, orzo, served with winter ratatouille and fondant potatoes
Served with choice of Fleming’s, Caesar, or Wedge Salad
$89.00 for two**
Suggested wine pairing: Artezin, Zinfandel Mendocino County, 2006
Dark Chocolate Frangelico Fondue, Almond sponge cake and assorted fresh fruit slices ready to dip into a warm dark chocolate Frangelico fondue
$9.50 for two**
Suggested wine pairing: Yalumba, Tawny Port Barossa Museum Release Antique Australia NV
Reservations are recommended for this popular weekend. Please visit www.flemingssteakhouse.com for your closest restaurant and to make a reservation.
*$25 Valentine’s Card offer is available for visits occurring on 2/13/09-2/15/09 only;$25 Valentine’s Card will be delivered at the end of the meal and will be valid from 2/16/09 through 3/31/09; one gift card per couple
**not including tax and gratuity
The Food Snob’s Dictionary
The Food Snob’s Dictionary is a great reference book for all things fine dining. David Kamp, who also authored The United States of Arugula, takes all of the confusion out those fancy words you find on restaurant menus. Hey, if you need to explain “Poulet de Bresse” and to friends, dates and clients, then this book is for you. We find it really helpful when talking to journalists who will forget more than we will ever know. About $12.
